


Double Blind Study

by arkytiorforemancampbell



Series: The Mary Sue Adventures [3]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Bullying, Divided Loyalties, Gen, The Rani being a jerk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 05:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3346007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arkytiorforemancampbell/pseuds/arkytiorforemancampbell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Last Great Time War is turning the universe into the Rani's perfect playground: unlimited funding, shameless impunity and... yes, that's basically it.<br/>So it's understandable that finding an annoying CIA agent snooping around in her lab isn't exactly going to do wonders for her mood... or her attitude.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double Blind Study

**Author's Note:**

> co-author: ushastherani (tumblr url, no idea if there's an ao3 account)

"And that’s basically why I’m here".

Milly didn’t need to stop pretending to concentrate on some detail of the weird apparel of the Rani’s lab and look at her face to know she wasn’t happy. She couldn’t blame her. Though she’d put all her efforts to dress up her explaination in obscure jargon and technicalisms, the core of it vas quite clear: the CIA didn’t trust the Rani enough to let her go on spending her astronomical funding in peace, while the War Council didn’t distrust her enough to stop giving her full support, and the bargain had been sticking an agent on her like a nasty ginger-haired tick.

Considering the renown temperamental disposition of the Rani, there had not been many volunteers for the task. Too bad for Milly that she had by then run out of missions to accept to stay the hell away from the front lines.

And so, long story short, here she was. She only hoped the newly found freedom of action and pretty much endless funding had improved the scientist’s mood and manners…

"Well, that’s just great. The CIA sends a rat to spy on me just when I get to do as a I please- or should I call you a guinea pig?" The Rani sighed, carefully adjusting the settings on a strange piece of technology. "Tell them they can shove it down their looms, I’m merely a vendor, I’m not going to submit to the High Councils tyranny."

The Rani was actually containing her anger fairly well, considering how many illegal activities she conducted. She definitely didn’t want the Time Lords to discover who else was buying her weaponry and defenses. She’s also been rather preoccupied trying to find a way to avoid being destroyed if the worst were to come, so she wasn’t entirely sure having Milly aboard the ship wouldn’t land her in the Oubliette of Eternity, despite the supposed retirement of it thanks to the issues caused by the Neverpeople.

"Shame, I recall I had such hopes for you originally. Now you’re just another pawn for this war.:

“

"Yes well, we all had many hopes for many things, but guess what? No one cares. And no, I’m not going to go back anywhere, and I’m not telling anyone to shove anything in any place, and the reason for this is that it would end with me meeting an untimely end on some Founder’s forsaken rock, which at the very best happened to be orbiting too near to some fixed point or anomaly or whatthehell, or quite probably just looked nice on some star chart and somebody said "hey that tiny dot up there looks strategically promising let’s send a platoon or a thousand. No thank you."

She carefully placed the weird thingie she’d been playing with back on its shelf.

"Look, I have no interest in hindering your work. Just think of me as free labour if you want. All I have to do is file a report every now and then, so you get to keep your funding flowing as usual and i get to keep my backside where it’s relatively safe. Everybody wins.

 

"… Perhaps we could come to some sort of agreement- You continue to send good progress reports on what I’m doing down here, you get to stay aboard my TARDIS and way from the danger, and we both get lots of funding for whatever we prefer to do." If worst came to worst, the Rani would activate her device early and hide out in the pocket universe it would create until the war ends.

The Rani sighed, grabbing the strangely shaped metal and inserting it into the machinery, finishing up the prototype and shoving it onto the shelf.

"Do we have a deal?"

"Yes, that was exactly what I was thinking about."

It wasn’t exactly true. One or two under-the-counter transactions with alien governments she could deal with, but Milly doubted she would ever dare to cover for the Rani if she actually turned out to be working on both sides in this war. No, she didn’t doubt it: she knew she wouldn’t.

Funny how time didn’t seem to change a thing. She had thought she had grown far apart from the naive little girl that first had met the Rani, ages ago. She had seen enough that sometimes she felt like her centuries had somehow been replaced by just as many millennia overnight. But there she was, the Rani, still a step beyond the limits of Milly’s grey area of morality, making her feel a clueless goody two shoes, just like she had done to her previous self so long ago.

"Just don’t let me see you shaking hands with a Dalek, and we have a deal."

"Very well. Go set yourself up in your new room while I finish up in here. Second floor, third hall, fourth door on the left." The Rani waved her off, thinking how to continue her machinations with this new Time Lord aboard her TARDIS- Perhaps memory wipes would need to be in order? Or perhaps she could relabel all of the weaponry she’s supplying the Daleks as defenses for the other Temporal Powers… No, she would never fall for that.

"Just what I needed… A CIA agent aboard my ship. I suppose it’s better than having a fiercely patriotic agent tracking my every move, but still…"

Milly headed straight to the room. She would have had all the time to stick her nose everywhere else, no point in pissing off the Rani now. Once inside, she didn’t even bother looking for surveillance devices. She was sure there were many, most of which she would never have found. Oh well. There was nothing she could do about this.

At least the room was nice. A bit dull, compared to the ones she’d seen aboard the TARDISES of more eccentric renegades, but clean and much better mantained.

She sat on the bed, doing a quick inventory of her wide assortment of gadgets - thanks Omega for dimensionally trascendental pockets. Among the various recording and communication devices, there were some external memory drives - she had the strong suspect her memory would get mysteriously weaker in the immediate future, especially around the time of the Rani’s business meetings - and an assortments of antidotes to the most common mind-control drugs. Not that she hoped the Rani would use anything common to screw up with her judgement.

Milly was pretty sure that by the end of this adventure, she’d probably end up with a few extra limbs and a collection of mental ailments to make her most infamous cousin proud. Still, it was all pretty tame compared to being blown to smithereen at the very best, and completely erased from history at the very worst - two outcomes far from unlikely on the front lines.

Here at least she could hope to remain in one piece. And if not, there were still chances of the possible dismemberbent being temporary. Though she really hoped the Rani wouldn’t go this far…

 

The Rani dug through her compartments looking for the correct vials, peeling off the labels of each one so when Milly decides to snoop, she won’t be able to find anything incriminating. How dare the High Council spy on her? What right to they have? She is no longer a Gallifreyan citizen, she is hardly an ally, she just provides the weapons for the highest bidder, than uses that money (or supply, in some cases) for her experiments. There’s nothing wrong with that!

The Rani took a deep breath and turned on the monitor in the lab, observing Milly and still debating what to use to get her weaponry to the Daleks and the other beneficiaries.

Eventually, she just put a few vials of chemicals out on the table and left the lab for storage, returning to examine the dinosaur embryos she stored down there.

One countermeasure the CIA hadn’t dared to take was to equip their agent with one of those new transmitting memory feeds they were implanting on soldiers on the front lines. There were many reasons for which no sane agent would accept such an action, some political and some almost superstitious. In Milly’s case they had tried to insist a bit more, but she had been adamant in her refusal. The last thing she wanted, in the unlikely case she managed to come back in working conditions, was some jerk on the upper levels saying something along the lines of “oh look that one is already half equipped for a field mission let’s send her to sector a24dtAPPLE4 to inspect on the troops”. No thank you.

The downside of this was that she had to rely on manual backup and periodical reports as her only means to keep in contact with what was really to happen during her stay. Which basically meant she were in for a full-time chess play with the psychopat downstairs.

Oh well, still better than the daleks. If she managed to remind this detail to herself every once in a while, it all sounded more acceptable.

With a sigh, she left her room and headed downstairs to the lab.

 

The Rani pulled a memory drive out of a malfunctioning android and began editing the programming on it- she undoubtably brought backups, and maybe she was stupid enough to use a corrupted one. Doubtful, but she needs to prepare every possible trap in case the worst were to occur.

When the Rani heard footsteps heading to the lab, she rolled her eyes. What did she expect to find in there? Milly wasn’t the first spy the CIA sent- though the first using their own agents. The Rani already hid everything incriminating extremely well.

She sighed, getting back up and returning to the embryos, attempting to keep herself calm. After what seemed like an eternity, the Rani got up and turned on the monitors to the lab, observing what Milly was doing in there.

Milly was doing exactly what she was supposed to: she was studying the various stuff on the various shelves and tables, examining the peculiar technological machinery and trying her best to figure out the contents of the many conveniently unlabeled containers., with the help of a complicated looking sonic probe. Every now and then she stopped to take some notes on her data pad. It was clear from the dispirited espression on her face that she didn’t harbor hopes of finiding anything significant this way.

After a while, she seemed to give up on the task. She fiddled with her probe’s settings and started waving it around. She finally seemed to have found what she was looking for. Staring directly into the camera, she smiled and waved her hand as in a greeting, then pointed at herself and then down, clearly asking if she was welcome to join the Rani wherever she was.

 

The Rani smirked as Milly couldn’t find anything, not even with technology the CIA probably gave her. When she found the camera, the Rani turned on the om com.

"Fine. Just come down into Storage. I trust you can find the way yourself." She said, turning it off without bothering to give her the directions. She went back to checking the vitals signs of the stored test subjects.

Although she couldn’t recognize any of the rooms and corridors, the organized mind of the Rani hadn’t changed a lot, and this TARDIS mirrored it closely in its architecture, so Milly found the Storage rooms quite easily.

"Hello again" she greeted the Rani as soon as she reached her. "Just like good old times. Have you redecorated or is this a whole new TARDIS? It’s so different I can’t really tell…"

 

"Latest model of the TT capsules released, that was one of my requirements when I agreed to supply the Time Lords. Of course, I still made quite a few modifications." The Rani droned on, almost like she was bragging.

She noticed a small blip on the radar and sighed. “Apparently not.” She said as she crossed something illegible off on the screen. “Still alive…”

"Anyway, is there a particular reason you wanted to come down to storage? Not much is down here, aside from cryogenics, life support systems, and observational equipment." The Rani gestured towards the monitors.

"Why, for the company of course! So, what are we going to do now?

"Well, I was planning on testing some bio weaponry on some Shobogans and some Daleks I… Acquired."

"Wait, they actually allow you to use Shobogans?"

Milly was surprised, though not as much as she would have liked. Although with the threat of extinction becoming more and more real the caste system was somehow shaken, Shobogans were still seen just a tiny step above aliens, which kept them hovering dangerously near to the bottom line of the definition of “people”. This, combined with the fact that they had the nearest biology to the Time Lords in the whole universe, didn’t bode well for them. Though the Rani wasn’t probably exactly authorized to conduct destructive experiments on them, Milly could imagine more than one officer already had turned a blind eye on possible “accidents” in that regard. Milly guessed she was about to add her name to the list.

As for the acquired Daleks, well… the hard part was keeping herself from enjoying the thought.

"… Of course they do. It’s for testing purposes, and they are Shobogans, why wouldn’t they let me? They practically forced me too.” The Rani shrugged before readjusting the variables on the remote detonation.

"Perhaps a bit more needs to be released… Turn the monitor  to room 3R80, please. I want to observe this." The Rani requested as she began storing up more of the gas. In truth, she was merely preforming this experiment to occupy her time while Milly was in the room, watching her work. She couldn’t exactly continue working on her plans in case Gallifrey were to fall while another Time Lord was in the room, lest she be forced to bring said Time Lord.

"Rather interesting drug, this is. It’s absorbed by the Dalek feeding tubes unconsciously, and as they take it in, it dissolves the Kaled blob inside of it." And any other living creature, but there’s no need to mention that.

 

Milly turned on the monitor as she was told. She was pretty relieved this one was not one of the experiments involving the Shobogans. The monitor showed what remained of a pretty beat up dalek, with its sucker and weapon arm removed and restrained by heavy chains. On the right side of the screen flashed a great number of graphs and data, showing different readings from both the dalek and the room.

"I see. Is it painful? I hope it is. I just wonder… are those readings about the atmosphere in the room? Seems pretty bad. How do you plan to use that gas on an actual battlefield? Even if you drop it by remote controlled drones, the "cleared" area would remain unapproachable for anything organic for… what, weeks?"

"That’s the point. Destroy an enemy base, or even a planet, so thoroughly there’s no chance of them returning." The Rani stated, as if it was obvious. "That’s what I was commissioned to design, after all." She said as she finished up the final adjustments and released the gas.

The effects were apparent almost immediately, despite the gas being invisible. The Dalek began to malfunction as the stubs of metal where it’s weaponry once existed flailed wildly, its lights flashing and dimming erratically, and it screaming in agony. Eventually, the lights on the Dalek dimmed completely, and as far as the Rani could tell, the experiment had been a success.

"Now then, shall we see if it effects Time Lords as well?"

"What - no!"

Milly stared at the Rani, horrified.

"What is it you’re testing, the gas or my limits? There’s no reason to do something like that! You know perfectly well what would happen. You’re doing this just to annoy me, isn’t it? You want to see how far I would go to save my sorry arse!"

  
  


"Both, I suppose. I honestly don’t give a damn what happens to you, but I wanted to see how far you would go to protect yourself." It did give her insight onto how far she would go for the sake of her career, which was what she was planning on figuring out, anyway.

"Anyway, if you could go check the vital signs on the rest of the test subjects, I would appreciate it. I have some more work to do in the lab."

She immediately got up and left the room without waiting for a response, heading down the hallway into Milly’s room.

 

"Riight, sure…" Milly muttered, as she watched the Rani leave the room. She had no doubts the lab was the last of her destinations. Most probably she was going to snoop around in her room. There wasn’t much to be found that she couldn’t have already identified or at least expected. The best toys where safe in the deepest ends of Milly’s pockets.

Oh well. The Rani had asked her to inspect the subjects in storage. Might as well turn it into an official inspection. After all, she needed something to write on the first preliminary report…

The Rani opened the door cautiously, looking around the room. She began looking through the room for traps to set when she found a few external memory drives. She smirked as she replaced one of them, then went on looking through the room. She found a few reports about herself Milly was given she decided to ‘touch up’, activated a few cameras, and adjusted the settings on the bed to make it as uncomfortable as possible- Gallifreyans may not need to sleep much, but they need to eventually. A sleep-deprived enemy is an enemy far easier to deal with.

She locked the settings on the mattress and went back down to Storage to make sure Milly didn’t alter anything.

Milly’s inspection was short and unpleasant. There was nothing seriously out of place from an official point of view, but there was quite enough to make her feel ill at ease. She felt guilty looking at the faces of the people behind the glass. Sure, in a way they were not so different from the countless soldiers that were sent to die every day in the most remote corners of the universe, but that was quite the point. They weren’t soldiers, they were just… people. To her, it would have been much more acceptable if the war council had given up a couple of improved soldiers from the new war looms, than a bunch of Shobogans and Outsiders. And probably much more useful. She wondered if her position would have allowed her to ask just for that. It wasn’t impossible - though much work was devoted to raising the new soldiers as perfectly obedient killing machines, deserters still existed, and maybe the high command would have enjoyed the opportunity to make an example of one or two of them by sending them here. Let alone how much such an agreement would improve Milly’s situation. Though the Rani wasn’t one for gratitude, such a gift could set the bases for a much less dangerous coexistance…

The Rani approached Millys side as she stared at the Shobogan inside the tube. “Shame the Time Lords insist on having me use them, isn’t it?” The Rani said. “I would have been fine testing on Dulcians and other humanoids similar in physiology, but they wanted it to be as close as possible.”

She turned around and began shutting off the lights inside the storage to preserve power. She didn’t want Milly to continue to humanize the creatures in it.

"Well they’re hardly so similar anymore. Even a pre-war civilian Newblood like me is barely comparable to one from the Old Houses, and the difference between one of them and a Shobogan is even greater. And nevertheless, many times i’d been forced to admit how inferior my hardware is when compared to the new soldiers from the War Looms. I wonder how long it will take till you’ll find much more reliable models for our own people in the daleks themselves…"

"Fair enough. Though they are the closest genetic link Gallifrey allows me to… study. I doubt they’ll give me any Newbloods to study, though I don’t exactly see how you are much of an improvement." The Rani explained. "Anyway, I believe that’s all I will require you for. You can leave now, I can finish the rest of my work on my own."

***

Milly’s first preliminary report had been more or less positive, and all things considered so had been the following two periodical ones. The Rani had gracefully managed to keep her from stumbling upon any major infraction to the funding agreements, and apart from a few more or less harmless pranks - including a pretty unsavory one involving Milly’s mattress, that had taken her a week to discover and fix - there had been no real attacks, which was more than what Milly would have dared hope for.

Sure, the Rani constant teasing about “how tempting” it was to have a perfectly functional Time Lord roaming around was not the most reassuring thing to hear, especially before eating or going to sleep, but she was reasonably sure she’d never been used as a lab rat… yet. She always made sure to make a full backup of all her experiences every evening, and she always double checked them the morning after, just to be safe. She had not found any discrepancy, which was reassuring enough for her.

In the last report, she had hinted at that idea about “borrowing” a soldier, and she had received a mildly favourable answer - something along the lines of “not promising anything but should the occasion arise we may consider the idea”.

Though it sounded good for her own situation, it didn’t say anything positive about how the war was probably going.

Still, it was not bad to have some good news to bring to her housemate downstairs. Things were always easier when she was in a good mood.

Milly pocketed a memory drive - she had already filled four, this was the fifth - leaving the room without bothering to lock it (it would have been pointless anyway) and walked downstairs to the lab.

The Rani was managing to hide her outrage and contempt at the Gallifreyan occupying her TARDIS fairly well, considering. She was tempted to shove her into storage and tell the Time Lords she ran off at times, but she knew that would never work. Instead, she was forced to deal with the insufferable Time Lord.

She was occupying most of her time discreetly sending weaponry to the Daleks without Milly noticing, mainly during the ‘trips’ she took to planet that haven’t been mapped by Time Lords since Rassilon himself was president. She handed the weaponry off to androids that looked similar to various temporal powers, just in case the cretin happened to be watching.

She was idly fiddling with the console as she heard the footsteps and groaned inwardly.

"Milly, I see you’ve finished reading the responses the Time Lords sent. Tell me, any good news?" The Rani asked, already having intercepted and read it.

"Only the ones you’ve already intercepted and read." she sneered back. "With a bit of luck, you’ll be soon getting a new toy to play with. Which I hope will be a good incentive for you to resist the urge to play with me a little longer. Unless something goes wrong in the meanwhile."

She walked to the cabinet where the Rani kept her personal snacks, scanned a cookie with her sonic device, discarded it, scanned another and bit into it. “Nishe try” she said with a full mouth, “but you’ll not shtop me from taking your cookies so easily. Now tell me, is there any reason why most of your meetings seem to happen in more and more absurd places lately? If I weren’t such a trusting person, I’d start to worry there’s some reason besides your wanderlust…”

"Some of my clients are the kind that don’t want to show their face around certain parts of the universe." The Rani answered, almost truthfully. "They requested a randomizer to be set when I meet with them."

The Rani rolled her eyes. She honestly thought she cared about her eating the cookies? Well, she did a little, but it was more of an attempt to dissuade Milly from disobeying her.

"Now then, anything on the itinerary from Gallifrey?" She asked sarcastically. "Anything they need us to do? My schedules wide open."

"It better be, considering your personal funding alone is among the first five issues in the expense record of our friggin government… but no, you know full well there’s nothing. Are you getting too lazy to read my personal mail? That’s bad for the business you know!”

Milly finished the last biscuit in the bag even though she wasn’t hungry, just to annoy the Rani. “You can go on with your trades. Only next time I want to come with you personally. Just to make sure nobody tries to take advantage of your good faith. You know how it is, a brilliant mind in the lab, a naive candid soul when it comes to dealing with ruthless merchants…”

The Rani held herself back from punching Milly in the gut. “Very well, if you insist. You won’t find anything interesting on the trip, however. It will just be me handing off defenses to civilizations being affected by the Time Lords.”

She was definitely going to lose her funding if Milly actually came with her and reported what she observed, not to mention she would probably be executed for high treason. Milly may be an idiot, but any idiot can tell the difference between an android and a person.

"I’ll go set the coordinates for the next meeting. You should probably go upstairs and sync your memories, who knows what I put in that food?" The Rani asked, attempting to scare her.

"Oh, I know perfectly well what you put in your food. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have escaped fourteen attempts at mild poisoning and two almost serious ones since i’m here, would I? And as for that backup, I’m already doing it" - Milly took her memory drive out from her pocket, waving it under the Rani’s nose. "All I need to do to complete today’s update is push this tiny little button here."

Among her collegues at the Agency, Milly was known for her uncanny - and mostly undeserved - good luck, which more often than not helped her come out in one piece from the most unlikely spot. Some said it was due to some damn good probability warping during her looming, some thought the goddess fortune herself may have been involved at some point. Milly’s personal theory was that luck - or more specifically, bad luck - was somehow akin to static electricity, and that she was for some reason a pretty good accumulator. Then, once in a while, all the bad luck that had not freely run through her, discharged in a moment - usually resulting in moments of extreme social awkwardness.

But there were times when that energy found a way to properly discharge through real trouble. This one was one of those times.

All the Rani had hoped for, when she had swapped one of Milly’s memory drives with one she’d tampered with, was probably to gain a couple of days of relative freedom, making her tormentor lose track of a few minor events, and possibly having some fun watching her trying to figure out the inconsistencies in her memories.

What she had not considered, was that the brain of an operative CIA agent was crammed with all sort of barriers and failsafe mechanisms.The result of this, combined with that thing about Milly’s luck, was that as soon as she pressed the button of the memory drive, her brain simply shut down, and she collapsed there were she was standing, out cold and at the complete mercy of the Rani.

The Rani was shocked, to say the least. She didn’t expect her to completely shut down, merely get screwed up. She took this chance to rifle through her pockets and snatch the equipment that was giving her an extremely hard time, the memory drives, and the sonic probe.

She put them in her own pockets and raised an eyebrow at Milly’s body. She wasn’t sure if she was even still alive, or if she was a vegetable now. The Rani ended up bringing her down into the lab and placed several wires onto her, monitoring the vital signs and brainwaves. Remarkably, Milly was surprisingly intact, despite the dramatics earlier. There were some clear gaps in her memories and knowledge, but there wasn’t any permanent damage.

The Rani left her downstairs and and began setting coordinates for a planet, for once not having to deal with Milly tagging along behind her.

***

Hardly enough time had passed for the Rani to really start enjoying her new-found freedom, that her com-link started ringing in that peculiar nagging fashion that was so typical of official people intent at official business, and not of the pleasant kind.

The Rani sighed, picking up the call. At least she’s had long enough of a delay to get some serious work done.

"Yes, hello. I’m aware your agent hasn’t sent any messages. She’s been rather ill, an experiment got a little out of hand. I told her not to touch anything, but she didn’t listen."

The guy on the other side looked as obnoxious as officers could get -someting half way between a politician and a vogon, all wrapped up in a robe that made him look like a penguin. “I hope you are aware this cannot improve your already unstable position. Now, is there any hope you’ll be able to let me speak with my agent right now, or i have to assume that idiot finally went and got herself killed?”

Something off screen attracted the agent’s attention - maybe someone talking to him - then the turned back to the camera. “Listen, we’re not going to make a fuss if she’s dead. Just return her remains to the Agency immediately so she can be properly uploaded. If her matrix logs confirm your version, no action will be taken and you’ll be assigned a more competent supervisor.”

"Well, she isn’t quite dead- a small incident occurred that fried her brain- she should be making a full recovery soon, though. Nothing too severe, somehow. It was extremely lucky. Here, I’ll show you her current vital signs." The Rani said as she pulled up a visual image of Millys heart rates and brain activity.

"Should be waking up any day now, possibly any hour. Besides, there’s no need to send another supervisor, Coordinator- you are the Coordinator, correct?- I’ve been following your instructions and operating within our alliance, as you can see by her earlier reports."

"Well, you’d better hope she’ll wake up soon to confirm what you’re saying. And that she sounds convincing. It would be a pity if the proficuous relationship between you and this agency were to be spoilt. Remember: if the assault troops can lose a black sheep to your lab as our agent so thoughtfully suggested , just as easily things could go the other way around. They say the front lines are a tough place, especially for reformed criminals who volunteer. I hope you get what i mean. You have one standard day. Have a nice evening. Over."

The Rani turned off the monitor and took several deep breaths, attempting to control her rage. She isn’t a Gallifreyan citizen anymore, how dare they think they can send her off into battle? There’s no way she would submit to their tyranny, anyhow. She would sooner die than fight a pointless war.

She went downstairs and glared at Milly, attempting to send electric shocks throughout her body to wake her up. Normally it doesn’t work, but it was still an easy way to relieve stress.

Maybe Milly’s static charge of bad luck had finally ran out, or more probably it was some deeply ingrained instinct for angry superiors in penguin suits, or possibly the two of them combined; in any case, Milly’s consciousness chose right that moment to come back from the - from her point of view - well deserved vacation.

"Ow! Ow ow ow! What the fu… Ow! Stop this! What do you think you’re…"

When she finally realized where she was, Milly burst out in a mental facepalm so loud it showed on the Rani’s monitors.

She closed her eyes not to risk to see the other idiot’s face, and sighed.

"Forgot to scan the last cookie, haven’t I?"

A wave of nausea made her desist from trying to focus on the circumstances of the accident.

"Let me guess: you’ve been running amok for a week or so, and now you have angry penguins at your door and suddenly want my help fixing the awful mess you’ve plunged us both into. Am i getting warm?"

"Actually, your brain got fried when you, in your infinite wisdom, decided it would be a good idea to power up an unstable prototype. I’m surprised your able to speak in full sentences right now, or even remember enough to piece that together."

The Rani was almost praying she had partial amnesia, otherwise when she sent her report, The Rani would be brought back to Gallifrey and ‘placed on trial’, which just means to kill ever since the war began.

"Just go upstairs and tell the CIA what happened already? I doubt they appreciate waiting for your reports." The Rani said, hitting the button to electrocute her one more time.

"Ow ow OW! You’re so gonna pay for this, you piece of a jerk!”

When the Rani had finished having her fun, Milly took a few deep breaths, fighting the urge to get down of that table and punch her in the face.

"I’m quite sure that’s not how it went at all. My money is on some nasty drug in the cookies, but never mind. Just help me get out of this… thing you’ve wired me to and tell me exactly what kind of bullshit you’ve fed to mr. Grumpy Penguin, so I can confirm your version. I just hope it’s something believable, and i sincerely hope he’ll take my word for it. And you should hope so too, or you’ll find yourself sharing K-rations in the muddy bottom of some foxhole with some former Shada inmate and Yours Truly. And you can rest assured Yours Truly would rather become breakfast for the Bugblatter Beast of Kraal than to share such intimacy with you.”

The Rani sighed, electrocuting once more purely out of spite.

"I told you what I told him, and I told you the truth. Just because your ego doesn’t allow you to believe you can make mistakes doesn’t mean you don’t make them." The Rani told her as she unhooking the wires and printed out her vital signs over the past week, handing it to her. "This should confirm my ‘story’, anyway."

At least the Rani did get rid of some of the tools Milly brought that were detrimental to her plans, and hopefully the Time Lords are too stubborn to replace them.

Milly frowned at the graphs, then looked for the nearest reflective surface to use as a mirror. When she saw the same face she was used to, staring back at her, she relaxed a bit. Apart from utterly invalidating the cookie-theory, those graphs clearly indicated that she’d been very very close to ending her mission with a bang. Had the Rani really been stupid enough to attempt to kill her without a backup plan? That sounded unlikely…

"Still don’t believe you, but that’s irrelevant. I’ll keep your version, but for both our sakes i’ll have to spice it up a bit. Now please let me some privacy as I try to fix your mess."

She spitefully walked out of the room, trying her best to look less wobbly than she felt.

Once she reached the Rani’s lab, she let herself fall into the command chair and turned on the com-link.

\- From her monitors in the Storage room, the Rani could enjoy the show of Milly’s attempts at persuading the Coordinator not to do anything too harsh. -

"Yes, Coordinator. Yes, sure I’m alive, you can see it with your eyes, can’t you?"

"No I’m not an hologram. No I can’t prove it, but I think you would be smart enough to tell if i were, don’t you?"

"Yes I’m perfectly fine, thank you for not asking, your concern is hearts warming. And yes, it was an accident.”

"No no no, I can guarantee it wasn’t staged. It was a real, honest accident. The Rani is on the verge of some extremely  useful breaktrhough in the field of defence systems, but we can’t advance anymore without that soldier you’ve been "considering" about sending for a while now".

"Yes this is relevant to the point, I’m getting there!"

”No, i’d not been “dabbling” with her stuff, that was a proper experiment. We were still waiting for that soldier, so I thought I may do in the meanwhile, but it seems i’ve overestimated the technology of the Oakdown looms a bit.”

"I don’t see what you mean by "as usual"…"

"No no no, I’m sure she’s not been up to anything majorly wrong while i was out of service. Thanks to your superior technology, I’ve bugged this place throughly, and I can reasonably guarantee she’d been up to nothing worse than her usual side trades with inferior species."

"Yes it’s all in my previous reports. She’s been making up her wages by selling outdated technology to non time-active civilizations. Not very ethycal but harmless enough. The upside to this is that she’ll be able to mantain her current levels of efficiency with severely reduced funding."

\- Milly smiled internally. This was but a small revenge, but it tasted sweet enough for her.

"Yes sir, you’ll be receiving a full report about the incident shortly."

"Yes sir I’m sure. About that soldier though…"

"Yes sir. No sir. I understand sir."

"Thank you sir. You too."

When the call ended, Milly let herself fall back into the chair like a deflating balloon. She felt trapped, and exausted, and she was sure that if she had a tiny bit more energy right now, she’d also feel more than a bit afraid. She didn’t buy the Rani’s story about the prototype in the slightest, but this could only mean one thing: she’d almost been murdered. Again. And she’d just finished a call that was all about bullshitting that idiot of a Coordinator to cover up for her almost-murderer.

"I hate this war" she groaned.

The Rani sighed- a week of freedom ruined by her having to wake up. Granted, she didn’t mean to have her almost die, but she wasn’t exactly upset about the outcome.

When Milly’s conversation with the CIA finished, the Rani went into the biohazard storage and grabbed quite a few chemicals that cause various issues- none of them lethal or rendering them in a comatose state, she learned her lesson from that- and began injecting and pouring the chemicals into the food and beverages in the kitchen.

The Rani then entered the lab and chuckled silently at Milly’s misery- she isn’t one to normally enjoy watching someone suffer without having it be for the benefit of science, but she couldn’t help it. The Time Lord deserved to go through this for interrupting her plans.

"There" said Milly, without bothering to sit straight enough to look at the Rani while she spoke - not that she had the strenght to do that if she wanted. "I got your sorry arse covered, and even speeded up things a bit about that soldier. Think of it as a little thank you present for failing to murder me."

She found the strenght to push the chair to rotate enough to get her face to face with the Rani.

"What I don’t understand is why you keep seeing me as your enemy. I think I’ve proved to you in all the ways i could that I’m willing to cooperate. If you weren’t such a jerk we could even be friends. Or at least coexist enough to get to the end of this war without losing half a dozen lives each. And yet there you are, playing stupid pranks I’ve not seen since my time in the Academy, and now outright trying to bump me off. I just don’t see the point!

"You don’t see the point? You don’t see the point!? Imagine if you were exiled for a mishap that wasn’t your fault, and you are forced into the cold, unforgiving universe with nothing more than an obsolete TARDIS. Then, when you finally pick yourself back up after several defeats, the planet that exiled you suddenly treats you like a slave and acts like disobeying their laws are treason. They send an annoying graduate from the Academy into your ship, and then tell you if you continue your work for the ‘enemy’, you’ll be exterminated. Then, that Time Lord acts like they have every right to be on your ship."

 

"And I didn’t try to murder, I overestimated you. There’s a clear difference between the two." The Rani huffed, glaring at her.

"Yes, I do that a lot too. Overestimate myself I mean. And ok, now I see your point. I just wonder why it took you several weeks and an almost-murder to decide to simply talk to me. Listen, I’ll blame the fact that I just misheard you using  the words “continue to work for the enemy” on the brain damage I’m evidently still suffering, if you’ll just calm down for a while and give me a break. If you could just put the kettle on, we could talk about it over a nice, non poisoned cup of tea and… I don’t know, think about something. Come on, I almost died and I’m letting it pass, would it be too much for you to just listen to my point too?”

The Rani paused for a moment, mulling it over. “Very well. We can discuss this over tea. I’ll go prepare it.” She said as she went upstairs and procured the kettle.

Milly sighed, burying her face in her hands. She was positively exausted, and she wasn’t sure where she would find the mental and emotional energy to try and get through to the Rani. Still, she realized she couldn’t go on like this a day longer.

The problem was, she couldn’t give up either. Though there were still chances the Coordinator would accept one last half-failure before shipping her to somewhere nasty - well, nastier than here - it was clear that his reserve of patience was running out quickly. Everything but a clean success was a step closer to that one-way trip Milly was trying so hard to avoid.

The Rani had sounded a bit too eager to prepare that tea. Milly felt her pockets for her sonic probe. They were all empty.

She sighed louder, looking at the ceiling of the Rani’s TARDIS. Right now, she felt just a little under a thousand years old…

"It’s perfectly safe, I assure you. Though a little hot." The Rani said, pouring it into two cups and sipping it herself for proof. She then handed it to Milly.

"Now then, I’m all ears. Tell me why exactly I should allow you to remain in my TARDIS unharmed, and I’ll consider it." The Rani said as she sat down, crossing her arms. She didn’t really believe there was much Milly could say to get her to agree to her terms, but it was the simplest way of extracting information. Besides, she already took the antidote for it anyway.

Milly took the cup, enjoying the warmth and the smell. She was quite sure the Rani had added some “secret ingredient” - seeing her taking that silly little sip had just confirmed her suspects - but right now she was so done she seriously considered going on and drinking it anyway, letting the Rani have her fun.

"I never understood what is it with renegades and tea. Sure, everyone drinks tea nowadays, even back home, but this one… earl grey… it’s always earl gray with renegades. I like it too. In time, I’ve learnt to associate this smell with freedom. Sometimes it makes me feel nostalgic even."

She sniffed the tea, thinking about what to say next.

"You see me as an annoying little kid straight out of the Academy, and you’re not wrong in a way. I used to see myself the same way too. A little gift from my friends at the CIA. All my travels, all the adventures I had as a kid… pouff!" She made a gesture with her hands to underline her words. She was so tired she felt like she was drunk. Or maybe her brain had been damaged after all. She didn’t care much at the moment.

"They’d taken it away. Every single moment. Every planet, every story, every face. Even yours…"

She stared at the Rani, as challenging to say something about it.

"And then they sent me after your old friend, the one they call the Doctor. He loves his tea too. Oh, the times we’ve had tea together. Just like we’re doing now. He never tried to poison me though. Not that it made a big difference in the end. You know how he is. He managed to get me killed. I’m not pissed at him, regeneration triggered something in my brain and I got my memories back, so I don’t complain. I’m not pissed at the CIA people for taking them away either. I can see their reasons."

She looked at the cup again, considering what to do next.

"You talk about yourself like you’re a victim, but you’re not. You’ve done what you wanted since you were a kid. They wouldn’t let you do what you wanted, so you said fuck you all and did it all the same. You were exiled, yeah, big deal. You would have died of boredom on that rock, you know as well as I do. And then this war came and turned the universe into your perfect playground. You basically won the jackpot. You’ve been fully pardoned,  drowned in funding and literally begged to return by that same ones that didn’t want to recognize your genius, and all they ask in exchange is to have just a little hint of decency. You don’t need  to sell your results to the enemy, you’re not doing it for greed. You just do it out of spite. Like all those pranks you keep pulling on me.”

She took a sip out of her cup, then shrugged and gulped it all down.

"See? This is how much I care. I told you before: I listened to what you had to say, and I see your point. Now could you please just try and see mine?"

"I’m sorry, did you just say I’ve done what I wanted since I was a child? I never imagined myself being enslaved by Gallifrey, being cast out from the only society with any potential equals, and my friends either going completely insane or just abandoning me. I die of boredom every day- do you know how mind numbing the conversations with Miasimians are?"

"And no, I’m not doing it for spite. I’m doing it for funding. I need funding to complete my project- do you know how hard it is to lift three planets and a TARDIS out of the universe? Let alone inventing and designing the machinery on your own." The Rani said as she finished her tea and stood up. "As an outside observer, I can tell where this war is heading. Complete annihilation of the universe. The High Council and the Daleks alike don’t give a damn about anything else in the universe, and the new looms are made for war. Neither side will just stop when they end each other. This Time War will either destroy the universe, or destroy the two civilizations."

"Now then, I do hope you realize the reason I’m willing to tell you all this."

"Yes, I think I do. Given I doubt you’d ever be so crazy to try to kill me again, the only reasonable hypothesis is that I’m going to forget every single word of this. As I said, I don’t care. You’re fooling only yourself. You’re the one that pushed everyone away. That crazy cousin of mine, the Doctor, Sarah Jane… just like you’re doing with me right now. And yes, I am afraid you’re quite right about how this war is going to end. Mutual assured destruction, that’s probably it. Or it may not be. But how are we going to know, if the best minds of this universe are busy hiding, or running, or sulking?"

"Once again, I never tried to kill you in the first place. Merely mess with your head to the point I can roam freely- I overestimated you, like I said." The Rani clenched her fist. "What do I care for those idiots? The first two were the only ones I could consider friends at one point, and they both became completely insane and moronic. And as for the drug, more or less. It should also make you a little more… compliant, but the main reason was to erase the memories of the issues you went through."

She wasn’t even going to bother responding to her logic at the end- typical Gallifreyan logic. Not bothering to realize the war was for naught, and there was no real reason to participate, the only thing to do is to preserve enough of the universe.

Milly nodded. “Yes, that’s probably for the best. It’d feel awkward to me if we tried go on as usual after having this conversation. A big friendly reset button is quite welcome, from my point of view.”

She let out a small bitter laugh.

"I hope you realize there’s a downside to this: if I’m going to forget everything we’ve just said, chances are some day soon I’ll be telling you the same words again. I guess I’ll have to apologize in advance, while I still remember what I’m apologizing for."

"Well, you’ll remember the basic outline of the conversation, so it’s not entirely a reset button, but it’s going to leave a lot of the details out." As well as a bit of her other memories. "Anyway, it was a pleasure talking with you, but we should be cut short any second now."

The Rani then got up and left the room, heading into Storage to do an inventory check to make sure nothing got out.

"Cut short by what?"

Milly tried to get up and follow the Rani, but the floor seemed to have grown tired of the conversation, because it chose right that moment to rush away from under her feet.The chair was a bit more generous, and accepted Milly without complaining as she fell back into its embrace. The empty mug clattered on the ground as the lights went out.

The Rani heard a thump in the other room and sighed. Hopefully there was some sort of chair there. At least now she would be easier to deal with- if it worked correctly, which she wasn’t sure of.

******

The next day, the Rani began setting coordinates while Milly was still sleeping in the lab.

Milly woke up in the Rani’s armchair, remembering she had fallen asleep there, but little else.

"Uh… hello" she said as soon as she saw her housemate in the room. "Sorry ‘bout yesterday. I think I was still a bit off, and that pompous penguin always manages to suck out all of my energies. I hope I didn’t say anything awkward. I do tend to make a fool of myself when I’m tired…"

"Understandable, and there wasn’t much we talked about, anyhow." The Rani shrugged, debating whether or not to test it and see the limits of the drug. She eventually decided to, believing the worst that can happen is her having to pretend it was a joke.

"We have some weaponry to deliver to the Daleks later today." She informed her, turning on the lab screens and reading the results of an earlier test.

"Yeah sure, very funny, ha-ha. Bundle of laughs you are."

Milly shuffled to the shelf where the Rani kept the instant coffee and got to work to prepare a giant mug of that stuff, getting the hot water from one of the nuzzles that were supposed to be used for less culinary purposes. For some reason, she was finding it extremely hard to properly wake up today.

"Now then" she asked, completely oblivious of the fragment of conversation they’d just had, "What are we up to, today?"

"Casual work, a few deals with some of my benefactors, and some experimenting on test subjects." The Rani said simply, smirking. At least she has less of an issue with that now.

"Do you remember what I was telling you yesterday, by any chance? It’s fine if you don’t, you seemed rather ill." The Rani asked idly as she checked on a few of the currently running tests.

"Yes I remember… something. I remember covering up for you with the Coordinator. I told him I had volunteered for that experiment that went wrong, but actually it was your idea to use me as a subject, so I guess you owe me one, right?"

She sniffed the coffee, then shrugged and emptied the mug into a basin.

"Do you have another coffee pack? I think this one got stale. Anyway… I remember something else, now that I think of it. You told me… Ah, yes! I was accusing you of sabotaging the experiment on purpose, but then you said that it wasn’t true, that you didn’t try to murder me, you’d just overestimated me, and I said that yes, I do it all the time too, and then we got very emotional somehow. And we had tea."

"I believe I have some somewhere in the TARDIS." The Rani told her as she finished up reading the results and turning off the monitors. She supposed she better make sure there weren’t any side effects for Milly- the last time nearly killed her, after all.

She pulled out another coffee bag out of what seemed like thin air and handed it to her.

"What were your best subjects in the Academy? Perhaps you could be of more assistance in the lab." The Rani asked innocently. "And what other assignments has the CIA sent you on?"

"General maths and temporal physics. And yes, before you ask, i’m a pretty decent pilot. Which comes in handy when you’re basically the CIA errand boy. I’ve spent most of my service bouncing around through all space time trying to get reluctant renegades and runaways to make themselves useful. Can you believe that one of them actually tried to put a bullet through my head? One of my best childhood friends! Well, it wasn’t the real me that he shot - quite obviously - it was a flesh puppet, but he didn’t know, and that’s quite the point don’t you think? Sometimes i wonder if by the end of this war there will be anyone still sane. Sometimes i wonder if i still am."

"Well then, can you go set coordinates for Skaro while I finish up here?" The Rani asked, continuing to test. "And what about your years during the Academy? Any friends you made there still alive after this war started?"

She wanted to make sure there were no other side effects to the drug before it’s categorized and stored away, ready to be used if required.

She started idly flipping switches on the console in an attempt to feign work. “Can you also make sure the navigation circuitry is working correctly? I’m not entirely sure it’s been functioning properly ever since I uninstalled the randomizer.”

"Yeah, sure. Why not the Eye of Harmony in the core of Gallifrey? That would make for a quicker and less horrifying demise." she joked, immediately forgetting about it.

"Oh yes, I had lots of friends at the Academy. We were a nice gang.  You know one of them claimed she was your biggest fan on Gallifrey? Lovely, talented people.Three of them survived till graduation. Last time I checked, one was still alive and another one missing.”

She shrugged. “It’s hard times for everyone”.

"Yes, I’d better go and check those circuits. I’d rather not end up in the middle of a battle or something. Why did you uninstall the randomizer anyway? I thought you said it was useful…"

"I found a more useful solution than the randomizer." The Rani said blunty as she set coordinates remotely while Milly checked on the circuitry, thanks to some improvements she made.

A fan? Now that was interesting- they way she reacted when they first met, the Rani would have guessed Milly was the biggest fan she had originally. Maybe she could get a willing assistant for once, if there truly was someone like that. “What’s their name?”

She finished setting coordinates for Skaro and waited until Millys checkup was done to enter them.

"Was. What was her nameis not important. It’s what names we chose that matters, and it’s by our chosen names that we swore we would remember each other. Our silly little fan club. She had taken your name, Ushas. I would have chosen it myself, but I arrived late. She tried to run away with five others right after they got their imprimatur. The planet was already surrounded by that time. You can imagine yourself how it may have gone. Who knows, maybe some of her cells are still scattered in a few dozens Dalek casings. Or maybe the whole gang is waiting in storage in some lab just like this one, inside some Dalek research station. But I guess I’ll never know. It’s not like I could pop up on Skaro and go asking around if anyone had forgotten a bunch of frozen kids on the bottom of their larder, could I?”

"Technically you could, since we are landing on Skaro as soon as your done checking on the circuitry. How is it, anyhow? Anything too dangerous?" She asked, looking at the console.

"Really? Ushas? It’s a decent name, yes, but it’s not exactly original. Couldn’t they have picked something more specific to them?" The Rani was growing a little impatient, so she switched back to testing. "No matter. What did you do when you weren’t in the Academy?"

"When? Before Grumpy Penguin confiscated half my life in exchange for a clean slate and a badge? You know what I did. Traveled, had fun, made friends. Always been good at friends, except with you. You, I’ve never managed to impress."

She stared at the machinery, looking helpless.

"Anything too dangerous… Honestly? I have no idea. All the standard parts seem ok, but as for the ones you’ve customized… half of them make me feel proud for being able to understand what the hell you’ve done, and the other half is just so brilliant it’s giving me a crippling inferiority complex. Seriously, your brain is… something. I wish I’d spent more time learning from you when we first met. Too bad you’re a psychopath. As for the names… well, we weren’t trying to be original. We just took your names - the names of the people from the original Deca. As a tribute, you may say - look I know it sounds pathetic, but it sounded like a good idea at the time.”

"And I suppose you chose Millennia? I’m surprised you know her name. The Doctors incident involved them being erased from Time Lord history posthumously. It was fairly sad, really. I learned quite a bit of my temporal engineering working with her."

Milly’s brain finally managed to process the key information: “Skaro? You meanthat Skaro? How in hell are we supposed to be able to get there without being atomized in just about under two seconds?!”

"Simple- the Daleks won’t fire on me, since I am delivering around twelve relative years worth of supplies to them. I suppose I can ask them if they heard about the young Ushas before we leave with the replacement Dalek test subjects and an adequate supply of Dalekanium." Who knows, they may still be alive as slaves. They have taken humanoid slaves in the past.

"You mean you’d take a risk as great as using your lab as a bait… just to try and save a bunch of fanboys when you don’t even know if they’re alive or dead? It’s not like you at all. I mean, the Doctor maybe, the Monk, in a good day, but you? It goes against everything I know about you. All the dossiers, all the reports, all my… my…"

Milly facepalmed hard. “Oh no! My reports! I was expected to file a full report about my accident by yesterday evening! I completely forgot! Why didn’t you remind me? I must do it immediately or we’ll have penguins all over us any moment now! Just wait for me, i’ll get it done in no time. Be right back!”

This said, she ran out of the room and up to her room.

The Rani rolled her eyes and started the TARDIS, hoping the navigation circuitry was working correct. Of course she wouldn’t just randomly risk her life for fans, but she was already heading there, there was no point in not asking about someone who believes they deserves to be her namesake.

She carefully landed the TARDIS and made sure the chameleon circuit was working correctly before turning on the monitor.

It wasn’t long before Milly came down the stairs, a satisfied look on her face. “All done. The penguins seemed pretty pleased. I guess they keep lowering their expectations about me. Well I shouldn’t be happy about this but whatever.”

A brief look at the monitor was enough to wipe the smile from her face.

"You weren’t joking. We’re really there. Here. That’s Skaro out there. Oh no. Oh no no no. I don’t think I can… I have a bad feeling about this."

"We will be fine. You can even wait in the TARDIS while I conduct my business here." The Rani said truthfully, opening the doors to the TARDIS. She then walked into storage and grabbed a dimensionally transcendent storage cube to deliver to the Daleks outside. This would also tell her just how effective the drug is, seeing how Milly reacts to it.

"You can’t… you can’t just walk out there and hope to chat your way through this! This is madness! They’ll see your bluff! They’ll blow you to atoms! They’ll erase you from history!"

This didn’t feel right. It was too weird, too out of character for the Rani. And what was that cube she was holding? Was she going to really take something of value outside?

"Are you going to try to buy my friends back?” she asked, struggling to find an explaination to concile what she was seeing with what she was feeling.

All her senses, plus logic and experience, were telling her the Rani was a traitor without any trace of shame or decency. But all her feelings were telling her exactly the opposite. And then again, the Rani’s behaviour confirmed this last version. Why would she act so openly in front of Milly if she weren’t completely in good faith?

Milly was starting to feel utterly lost…

"Well, I could ask if they are still alive while I conduct the business with the Daleks outside. They are getting quite a lot of supply today, anyway. Enough to potentially end our partnership- though I wouldn’t tell them that. Care to join me?"

She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she just walked outside and greeted the salt shakers, handing them one cube in exchange for another.

Milly had seen Daleks first hand. Even worse, she had seen the results of their passage. All her lives - well, for most of both her lives - she had been an inflexible pacifist, and possibly the friendliest person to ever roam the universe with a towel and a backpack. But the Daleks, she’d learnt to hate with a fervor that went beyond the hivemind-wide repulsion she shared with all her species. There were personal reasons too. Which was far from uncommon those days, but not any less real for this. Seeing the Rani virtually shaking suckers with them was simply too much.

One of the advantages of a respiratory bypass was that it was in fact possible to go on talking without having to actually take breaks to breath, in a way not so dissimilar to that which allowed human infants to keep feeding at their mother’s breasts while still being able to inhale. As long as this characteristic was used to fuel some specific Time Lord’s logorrea, it was hard to notice them doing it without knowing what you were looking at.

In Milly’s case, it meant she started screaming and just went on, and then she went on some more, emitting a single, never ending tone of pure anguish, while the frail card castle of excuses and rationalizations crumbled to dust in front of the sheer evidence of the Rani’s depravity. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t think and sure as hell she couldn’t stop screaming. All she could do was to stand there, half way through the door, howling like a demented foghorn…

The Rani winced at the screaming, assuring the Daleks that there was nothing happening against them, and that she was extremely grateful for the mercy of the Dalek Emperor to allow her to work under them as a free slave before shoving Milly back into the TARDIS and slamming the door, her still releasing that wretched sound. She nearly got her exterminated for that.

"If you would shut up, I believe I have some news you would be somewhat interested in." She tried to tell her, but she doubted Milly could even hear the Rani over her own screaming. Apparently the conditioning to hate Daleks to this point was more severe than she though.

She sighed and set the coordinates to a random point in space in case she was alerting the CIA somehow, waiting to see how long it will take for Milly to wake up.

Unfortunately for her own sanity, Milly was perfectly awake at the moment, and more aware than she had ever been in the last few days. Eventually, once the initial burst of her meltdown was depleted, she fell to her knees, and her horrifying scream gradually turned into an inconsolable crying.

The Rani sighed. “I suppose you don’t care your friends are being released from the slave squad they were assigned to and transported back to Gallifrey, or the fact that was the last time I’m probably going to be dealing with the lumps of metal?” She asked rhetorically, feeling a little awkward having the Time Lord just lying there on her floor.

Milly looked up at the Rani, finding it hard to believe her words. “You what?” she asked between sobs. “You’re lying. Please don’t lie anymore. I saw you. I can’t take it. I can’t take any more lies.”

It was all too absurd to be true. It couldn’t be true. But what if it were? What if the Rani had really bought her friends’ freedom? Milly was afraid that if she were to change her mind again, she would have gone mad for good.

"Please stop this. Stop doing this to me. Whatever you’re doing. Stop changing. I’m falling apart."

"Yes, you saw me making the final deal with the Daleks I would make for around seventeen tons of Dalekanium and your friends freedom." The Rani stated. She probably should have just gotten the antidote, but it may have already been too late.

"Stop changing? I’ve barely changed. The only real change I made was to you, not to me." The Rani said as she quickly scanned Milly’s vital signs for any damage using the equipment on the console. "Now can you please stop having a mental breakdown and forget this ever happened?"

She placed the cube onto the console and began pacing. If the CIA found out their agent was permanently broken, they would kill her. They would definitely scan her memories into the Matrix after declaring her dead and discover what she had been doing on Skaro.

Milly was doing her best to regain some control, or at least to stop crying. She hugged her knees, but it gave her little comfort.

"So you have done something to me after all. I guess that makes sense. I don’t quite remember how I was before, but I don’t think… this doesn’t quite feel like me."

She sniffed and looked at the Rani.

"Can you undo it?" she asked, the hopeful note in her voice sounding weird to her as she spoke. "Would you undo it?"

Milly closed her eyes, looking for the right words. Damn, it was so hard… when had thinking become so hard?

"I don’t know what the real me would do if she came back. I don’t understand half of what happened on Skaro, and maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t. Did you really save her… my friends?" she asked.

"If you really did, I think she would be grateful. You ask me to forget, but I can’t, and probably she couldn’t either. But i think she would be grateful. Just tell me, if you wanted to… would you be able to make her come back?"

"Stop being so melodramatic. All I did was make you actually willing to listen to me." The Rani rolled her eyes.

"I could undo it- possibly. Or I could just let you remain like this- if you revert back, you’ll just report me to the CIA and cause my arrest and dispersal. Besides, there’s a likely chance of the antidote breaking you completely. And yes, I did save your friends- though I did send them back into the Time War, so it may not be the operative word."

Truthfully, she did feel a little bad about manipulating Milly. She was a rather intelligent and somewhat insubordinate Time Lord, the first time in a while she had someone on the TARDIS that could be considered an equal- given another millennium.

However, she wasn’t entirely sure Milly wouldn’t be killed immediately if she just gave Milly the antidote, and she wasn’t sure if she would remain silent about the incident on Skaro.

Milly nodded. “I see. I get to chose between trying to get back to what I was, at the risk of what little sanity i’ve got left and possibly my life, or to go on being this… weird draft copy of me. Funny how it appears to be the recurring theme of my life.”

She let go of her knees and sat more comfortably on the floor, leaning back on her arms.

"Not that this is really for me to decide, is it? Not any more than it was when not a much different trick was played on me by the penguins. Without considering that, even in the case you accept to try and get that other me back, and even if everything goes right, and she comes back, this me… this version of me, the one that I am now… she dies. Yes yes I know, it’s always the same old story, is the person that comes out of a transmat beam the same that walked in, yadda yadda."

Milly smiled.  ”Well, anyway, I am happy that you’re finally being open with me. It feels good to be talked to like I’m an actual person, though it’s a bit ironical that it happens now that I am not. And I could never say enough to express how grateful I am for what you did on Skaro. I’m still having an hard time believing it’s true. Anyway, if it is true, then we’ll have to find a reasonable excuse for them being dropped back home like a supplies pack. “The Rani bought them back” is the kind of explaination that would get us to the front lines in a microspan. And if they’re really alive… well, I would like to try to stay alive as well, at least long enough to see them once more.”

She took a deep breath, ruffled her hair as to clear up her mind, and got to her feet.

"Well then. That’s our priority now. We’ll decide what to do about old me some other time. You ok with it?"

"I was just going to tell them you insisted on rescuing them and temporarily commandeered my ship to do so. They already have a low enough opinion of you, they should believe it."

The Rani began setting coordinates for- somewhere. She may just keep the TARDIS in flight across the Time Vortex for a bit as she continues to work on her machinery.

She turned back to Milly. “Both a puppet and an equal have their advantages, so I honestly don’t care what in the Eye of Harmony you pick.”

"Low enough to believe I tried, sure. High enough to believe i succeeded, I seriously doubt it. Anyway, no matter how good a story we come up with, i guess once the Daleks start coming up with shiny new cannons, my bosses will eventually notice the effects of your trades. I really hope you have an exit strategy, because as soon as they’ll realize what happened, we’re both going to be very, very screwed."

She walked up and down the room trying to think, making and discarding a dozen different plans, each one less likely than the other.

"I think I will not risk it with the antidote" she said finally. "When we eventually get caught, at least I’ll have an excuse for my "treason". It will probably grant meanother close encounter with the mind probe and a one way trip for the frontline, but that’s still better than going straight for that Oubliette the coordinator claims to have got rid of ages ago. By the way, he hasn’t.”

She shighed. “Who knows. Maybe I’ll get a chance to make up for the damage I’ve done not stopping you from selling out on Skaro. Though realistically I won’t probably last a week.”

"Shiny new cannons is a bit of an understatement- but I’ve made sure they look akin to previous Dalek weaponry, so they may just assume it was the natural evolution of their technology in this war."

"Still, your friends are quite possibly a threat. Perhaps we should intercept and eject them? Or we can say you’re the one that sold the weaponry to Skaro in exchange for your friends."

"Pinocchio in reverse." The Rani almost chuckled. Almost. "Very well, can you set coordinates for Miasimia Goria?"

"I’m on your side, doesn’t mean I’m suicidal. This new me likes you, but she’s not any more willing to die for you than the old me probably was. Well, I guess only time will tell. For now I’ll just go and do as you say. Miasimia Goria is it, then…"

She was about to set the coordinates as she’d been told, when the intercom light began to flash mauve - the universal colour and rythm of a distress signal.

Before the Rani could do anything about it, Milly had turned on the monitors and was struggling with the controls to get a decent reception.

Finally a fuzzy picture appeared on the main monitors. It showed what looked unequivocally like the interior of a Dalek ship of some sort, partially hidden by the face of a man Milly had never seen before.

A colourful stream of curses came out of the speakers, drowned by static but still clear enough to sound quite outrageous.

"… Can anyone +§@#ing hear me? This is Saucer Alpha gamma 78.zeta.." - he turned towards something or someone off screen, cursed at it too, and turned back to the monitor ".. whatever. We need help. Repeat: we need help."

Milly’s face was as white as a dead man’s skull. She didn’t need to recognize the face or the voice, the harshness of the profanities this one was uttering was better than any ID to her.

By the sound of it, right off screen a pretty furious blaster fight was going on. Milly could hear a female voice barking orders.

"We’ve taken control of the ship but we can’t hold it for long."

Milly turned to the Rani, smiling in awe, positively jumping up and down on the spot so much she was overjoyed. Tears were streaming down her face without her even noticing.

"It’s them! It’s them Rani It’s them! I told you they were good!"

Another hail of verbal abuse got her attention back to the screen.

"I can hear you!" she said, among the tears. "I can hear you, I’m tracking your position, just hold on a bit more, I’m coming for you! I’m coming right in! Get out of the way!"

Without even bothering asking for permission, she frantically got to work with the controls, setting the Rani’s Tardis to materialize in the room her friends were calling from.

Once it was done, she turned to the Rani and gave her a smile that was half an apology and half a firm refusal to be stopped.

The Rani was fairly annoyed to say the least- she didn’t want to have a bunch of soldiers in her console room, let alone soldiers that may still be loyal to Gallifrey. She debated whether or not to stop Milly when she shrugged and decided to let her save her friends. They may just flee afterwards, which would be better than having to explain how they were rescued by the High Council.

… Although it would be even easier to let them die on that ship and not have to do anything. She was supposed to be heading to Miasimia Goria, not saving these idiots.

After a few seconds of this argument with herself, she decided to allow Milly to continue with this, but punish her afterwards for the semi-mutiny.

"Just don’t waste too much time on this frivolous mission."

Milly didn’t even hear the Rani. She didn’t have any attention to spare, busy as she was trying to land an unfamiliar TARDIS she had never even been properly introduced to in a narrow room, while avoiding to atomize anyone by accidentally materializing in an occupied space.

Luckily for her - and for the people in the room - the Rani’s TARDIS had probably a better disposition than its pilot. As soon as they finished materialising, Milly dashed to the doors and flipped them open.

The blinding beam of a Dalek gun flashed past her right ear, missing her by inches and scorching a wall on the opposite side of the room behind her. Milly barely gave it any attention. She leaned outside and called for the others. “Come inside quick quick quick!” she shouted, as five strangers rushed into the TARDIS. One of them was being dragged by two of the others. The last one to get in pulled Milly back inside, just in time to avoid another blast - this one accurately aimed at the spot where just a moment before had been her face.

"We’re all here, close the doors" shouted the one that had pulled her back.

Milly stared at the one that had spoken, that at the approaching Dalek outside, than at her friend again.

Finally, someone else closed the door for her.  
  


The Rani felt uncomfortable. She didn’t want one other Time Lord in her TARDIS, let alone six. She was tempted to just drop them off on some moon somewhere and leave them to their own devices. She sighed as she set quickly set coordinates for one of the remaining hubs of transport left intact and turned around to face the intruders.

"Yes, hello. My name is the Rani, and you all are quite welcome for that. Now then, if you would kindly get out of my TARDIS while I have a word with my associate for doing this without my permission."

She turned back around and input coordinates for Miasimia Goria, preparing to launch the TARDIS the moment they land and get out.

Right now, the only attention the Rani got was a brief apologetical glance from Milly, and a very confused look from what would have been a blonde woman after a shower or ten. “You’re me?” she asked, incredulous. “You’re future me?”.

Meanwhile, two of the others were setting down the injuried one on the floor, without a glance to the owner of the place. They looked like they were used to looking after each other.

Milly swallowed a lump of tears. “No, she’s not. She’s the original.” she answered.

"You beat me to her name, i beat you to her autograph".

The blonde’s eyes lit up with recognition, and a moment later she was hugging Milly tight enough to hurt. A tall, goofy looking guy - the one with the filthy language - joined the hug a moment later.

"Yes, Thete, I missed you too" said Milly with what little breath she had left.

One of the people sitting on the floor - a scrawny little woman with short, spiky hair the colour of a wet rat and a serious frown in her pointy face - looked up to the Rani.

"Madam" she said, "thank you for rescuing us. May you take us to the med bay please? Mort is in a bad way…"

"Why would I take him to the med bay? I’m taking you lot to the nearest transportation hub, heading to Miasimia Goria, and dealing with Millennia." The Rani almost said as the TARDIS began to land. She didn’t want to have to deal with the Deca ever again, least of all a new Deca. She was getting extremely irritated by the suddenly crowded console room, and nearly just pushed them all outside.

She took a deep breath. “Med Bay is down the hall, third door past the lab.” She said through gritted teeth. “I’m sure you will be able to find adequate supply in there.” She said as she glared at Milly.

"If you would all excuse me, I need to talk to Millenia in my lab. It’s urgent business." She said as she walked into the lab.

Milly finally managed to disentangle herself from the hug. She wiped away the tears from her eyes, then smiled at her friends before turning her back to them and running after the Rani.

"I…" she tried to say, as soon as they were alone in the lab. "Sorry, no. I just… I’m sorry. And thank you. For everything."

"It was nothing. I believe this more than relieves my debt for the incident on Skaro." The Rani said as she picked up a syringe filled with the antidote. She twirled it around in her fingers, somehow not dropping or poking it.

"Now then, I believe this is a suitable punishment for you, wouldn’t you say? You are aware what’s inside it, right?"

Milly stared at the Rani, unable to understand.

"Why?" she asked. "Why now? What has changed?"

"To put it extremely simply, there’s no danger of you reporting me to the CIA now that I allowed you to save all your friends. So I don’t require you to be a puppet anymore."

The Rani put the syringe onto the table, gesturing to Milly. “If you would be so kind as to do it yourself, it would be great.”

"That’s… kind of you. I think. I’m not really sure."

Milly looked at the syringe. She was very tempted, and at the same time very scared.

"This… condition… it was my exit strategy. In case you were caught. But now I guess I don’t need it anymore. For what they know, your fans saved themselves. We just happened to be there to help them after they did…”

And then there was the chance of things going wrong. The idea that she could die after having been barely able to see her old friends…

"I really don’t know what to do. I’m grateful, I really am, but… would you give me some more time?"

The Rani rolled her eyes dramatically. “Well, that answers my question. You wish to remain like this?”

She picked the syringe back up and pointed the needle at her. “So you’re saying it would be an adequate punishment to use the antidote on you, then?” The Rani asked her as she glared at her.

Milly stared at the Rani in confusion.

"What? No… of course I don’t. I just wanted to make sure the guys out there are ok first, and maybe… I don’t know, tell them something. Not the truth of course, but… something, so they wouldn’t be freaked up if things went wrong. Am I even making sense?"

"Yes, you are. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it’s going to work like that. The antidote will most likely expire soon, this may be the last chance you have." The Rani lied. She figured it would be best to mess with Milly, as it would be a suitable punishment for her.

"Just tell me whether or not you want to be given the antidote now, and I’ll give you it or not."

Milly snorted. “Fine, whatever. You’re not risking much less than me anyway. Though you’ll probably be fine: I doubt anything in the world could erase my gratitude for what you just did. The main difference will probably be my conscience will give me a harder time putting up with your shit.”

Milly rolled up a sleeve and gave her arm to the Rani. “Ok then. Do it. Or don’t, I don’t really mind. But then I’m going to walk out of this room and go straight to the med bay to my friends. You get this?”

The Rani shrugged, injecting her with the antidote. The effects would probably become obvious fairly fast, and she could be able to get the Deca out of her TARDIS after this.

Milly squealed when she felt the pinprick - for a seasoned adventurer, she was pretty whiny.

"Thank you" she said, giving the Rani a tiny smile, before rushing out of the room. She had no idea what was going to happen now, nor how long would it take, but whatever it was, she wanted to be with her friends when it happened. She didn’t even check if the Rani was following, heading directly to the med bay instead.

As she expected, all five of them were there. Five, right. Still, all things considered, five was already a miracle.

"Kos tried to run away after the first week" said Thete, out of the blue, without her even needing to formulate the question. "Welcome back. Everything all right?"

"Yes" she lied. "A little matter that needed to be looked to. All fixed now. How’s Mort?"

"Not dead. Yet." answered the one that hadn’t talked yet. He was a bit shorter than Thete, and he had something off about him Milly couldn’t really put in frame.

The comment earned him an icy glance from the small woman - Drax, Milly was quite sure she was Drax - who was all busy trying to figure out how to operate the medical machinery, with the help of the blonde Ushas.

Milly was starting to feel weird now. She leant back against the wall, hoping no one would notice. Her old gang - well, a narrow majority of it - together again. That was enough, she guessed.

The Rani busied herself with the landing procedures before walking into the med bay, making sure they did indeed land at the correct point in time and space- not that it matters much, at the moment. She could probably just drop them off anywhere.

When she entered the Med Bay, she saw the Deca talking. She coughed a few times, attempting to quiet them.

"We’ve landed on the station, in case any of you want to get off. Not that there’s an option to stay."

"They’re going to stay for as long as they need to stay" said Milly. Whatever was to happen to her, it was happening now. Her whole body felt like it was a thousend miles away, and made of tv static instead of flesh and badly assembled paradoxes, and she had no idea of the effect it would have had to even think about moving a muscle. Nevertheless, her priorities seemed to be still in their place.

"Which is not long, correct?" The Rani practically seethed, before turning to who she believed to be Ushas. "You. You appear to reasonable- can you take your friends out of my ship with you when you leave?" The Rani asked her, not caring what Milly just said. It wasn’t her capsule, after all.

Being the biggest fan of the Rani, and thus having spent more time than the rest of the gang researching her character, Ushas was the one that had a less romanticized vision about her. The years she had spent on Skaro had given her even more unwanted insight into the way the mind of a psychopath worked. That’s why she didn’t even bother answering. She gave the Rani a serious look and nodded.

"No way" protested the grim looking guy, "We can’t move Mort! He needs help."

Drax was checking some readings on a small screen. “You’re being a mother hen as usual, Ral.” - she pointed at the temperature readings - “It’s dropped to zero. He’s gone into a healing coma.”

"Looks like he’s finally learnt the trick" muttered the young Ushas.

"I wouldn’t worry too much, Ral" Drax went on. "Your boyfriend  will be all right, he just needs to sleep it off."

"He’s your boyfriend too" Rallon pointed out.

Ushas snorted. She knew by experience once they started bickering it was hard to stop them - even for the Daleks, sometimes - but she had the feeling the original Rani could be even more short-tempered than them in that regard. “Ok, ok, cut the bullshit. We’re going, now. All of us. You’re coming with us, Mil?”

Milly didn’t move.

"Miles?" ashed Theta. "You are going to come with us, right? No way we’re getting parted again after all this time.”

Milly just stood there, staring at them.

Theta walked up to her, pushing her lightly to get her attention. She fell into his arms like a broken puppet, eyes wide open.

Four pairs of eyes pointed to the Rani, ranging from accusing, to furious, to utterly confused. The young Ushas was the first to find her words: “What’s happening?” she asked, genuine curiosity seeping through the concern in her voice.

"Well, she’s been assigned as my assistant by the CIA, despite my arguments against it. She was messing around with my experiments a few days ago and infected herself with some experimental drugs I was working with- she will be fine, don’t worry. I just gave her the antidote."

The Rani’s explanation brought about a lot of skepticism. No one in the room really believed her, but no one wanted to be the first to question her about it. Ral was the one that finally broke the silence.

"Mil isn’t an idiot, she wouldn’t do that to herself. What did you do to her?" He asked in an accusatory tone, glaring at the Rani.

"Rallon, I would never do something to harm Millennia." The Rani said, having extreme déjà vu. "You honestly think I would attack someone purely because they were invading my personal space? That’s rather rude of you."

"Then why is she like this?" Thete asked worriedly, carefully placing Milly down on a bed. "If you didn’t do anything, what really happened?"

"I already told you, she did this to herself! I had absolutely nothing to do with this!"

"She better confirm this when she wakes up" said Drax, looking at the Rani with an expression quite similar to that of a large, fierce sewer rat, wielding a large surgical instrument that looked as it had been designed for quick autpsies more than for delicate operations on living patients.

Without even exchanging a word or a glance, the four unwanted guests were moving around, taking position in the room as to keep the Rani under control while denying her access to the exit (Rallon took care of it by moving between her and the door).

Young Ushas looked the most conflicted. “I’m not sure she’s lying” she said.

"Ushas…" started Thete, stil near the bed.

"No really, she does a thing when she’s lying, a… thing with her eyes. And she’s not doing it now".

"Ushas!"

"What?"

"Miles." he said.

Four pairs of eyes moved to Milly’s bed. Her body was starting to shine.

Drax waved the scalpel in the Rani’s direction. “You’re so dead…” she growled.

"And it’s my fault her body rejected the antidote? I tested on myself earlier, and I didn’t regenerate!" The Rani said truthfully. "Besides, I warned of the possibility of this before she was given the drug."

Drax continued to wield the knife threateningly, attempting to take a slash at the Rani- fortunately, she managed to dodge her attacks.

The only one who seemed concerned about it was Ushas, who attempted to calm Drax down.

"She may be telling the truth! Can’t we- can’t we at least wait for Miles to wake up and tell us her version of the story?"

Rallon rolled his eyes. “Have you ever heard of a thing called post-regenerative trauma? We may have to wait days until we can actually trust her memory, and I don’t trust her to leave us alone until then.” He pointed his thumb at the Rani.

"Can we argue about this later? There’s someone regenerating, in case you forgot!" Thete said, glaring at them.

"Drax, cut it out" said the young Ushas.

"It’s what I’m trying to do".

"Drax!"

"Ok, fine." Drax gave up, lowering the scalpel. "Whatever. Let’s just let her kill us all one by one then. It’s not like she hasn’t already started."

"Guys, will you just shut the fuck up?" called out Theta, who had not given the slight attention to all their squabbles. "Something’s wrong here".

Ushas moved to the bed, and after a moment of esitation Drax Joined her. Only Rallon remained steadily planted in front of the door, looking at the Rani as to dare her to try and get through him.

"I don’t like this" Drax muttered. The light that had started spreading from Milly’s hands to the rest of her body was receding. "It kinda looks like she’s refusing." Ushas observed. "But there would be no reason…"

"Maybe she doesn’t want to change?" wondered Rallon from the door.

Ushas shook her head. “Miles? Nah. When she first got her imprimatur she gotthis near to wasting a life out of curiosity. Had to talk her out of it. It’s a Newblood thing. They just don’t care.” She turned to the Rani. “You’re her friend now, right? You know what’s happening? Can you help?”

The Rani grimaced when they called her a friend of Milly. “Perhaps the body’s doing this outside of her control- it did alter her brain chemistry; her body may have registered that as a threat and triggered a regeneration before becoming confused.”

The Rani examined the body who’s glow was fading. “… Well, she’ll die if she doesn’t regenerate right now. We need to trigger it. May I borrow your knife, Drax?” The Rani asked as she swiped it out of her hands and stabbed Milly in the left heart.

The Rani’s gesture was so fast that it took Milly’s friends completely by surprise. By the time the three of them pushed her out of the way, it was already late. This didn’t stop Drax from taking away the scalpel from her hand and pointing it to her throat, while Thete and her number one fan were pinning her against the wall.

At least, it worked. Milly sat up with a gasp, grasping her chest. Before the wound could even begin to bleed, a bright light came out of it, this time steadily spreading to the whole body. The process didn’t take more than a few seconds, and it left a new girl sitting on the bed, breathing heavily - and, quite oddly, half laughing - a bewildered look on her face.

She turned to the Rani, pointing a finger in her direction. “You… you shit..” she said, evidently surprised by the sound of her own voice. “That was… low!”

"One word and I gut her" said Drax, still threatening the Rani with the scalpel.

Milly shook her head. “No… no I… I think i made it.” -she let out a small laugh, like she was thinking about something hilarious only her knew. “Let her go, it’s… Rani Rani Rani I did a thing! I think it worked!”

She looked overentusiastic over something.

The others exchanged worried looks. Thete started to say something but Milly shushed him. “Not now Thete I need to try it out! Rani Rani please help me out with this! Come here, come, try to read my mind, tell me what I’m thinking now!”

The Rani raised an eyebrow, confused. She wasn’t entirely sure she should trust her, but her brain was far more powerful than Milly’s, and she was still recovering from regeneration, so there wasn’t much of a threat.

"Very well, but first-" the Rani glared at Drax. "Drop the scalpel, please. I don’t want to be stabbed in my own TARDIS."

Drax glared right back as the young Ushas pointed to the table. She sighed as she put the knife down.

She didn’t wait for a response before linking telepathically with Milly.

The first thing the Rani sensed was a slightly maniac enthusiasm, followed by a wave of curiosity and not a small hint of pride. This new incarnation of her assistant lacked the passive friendliness of the “improved version” it replaced, but considering the circumstances, it didn’t feel half as hostile as it should. Apart from a good amount of chaos, there didn’t seem to be anything of interest on the surface of her thoughts.

"I’m thinking of something right now. A secret. Try to reach it…come near, touch me, do whatever. I want to see…"

The Rani was curious- what was she even thinking? Perhaps she was just delirious. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look, would it?

She sifted through the chaos that was clouding Millys mind, attempting to clear it. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for, but it couldn’t be that hard to find it in a mind like this. She started checking every mental corner in it, looking for whatever it was she was talking about.

"Can’t see it yet? Really? Oh my, it worked! It really worked!"

The others looked pretty worried now. “Miles…” started Thete, walking towards her slowly, as he feared she could attack him in her delirium.

Milly made a gesture with her hand in his direction. “Not mad, no worries. Just trying out a thing. Ok then. Can you see it now?”

Right in the middle of the chaos in Milly’s mind stood a huge, ridiculous fuchsia elephant, trumpeting as loud as its creator’s enthusiasm felt.

Milly grinned in triumph.

The Rani sighed, closing the mental link. “Well, that’s… Interesting. I’m not sure exactly what purpose a mental elephant serves, but I suppose it’s amusing, at the very least.”

She turned to the four other members of the Deca, as well as the unconscious Mort. “Now then, I trust you all can get out of my TARDIS now that the excitement is over?”

She walked out of the med bay and began writing a report on the events that transpired to the CIA- leaving out a few, non integral details. She then closed the communications before they could respond and walked back in, hoping the rest of them left.

As soon as the Rani left the room - which she could manage only thanks to her younger namesake, who was evidently influent enough to be able to order Rallon to clear the passage with just a stare - everyone rushed towards the new Milly, flooding her with questions.

"Yes, it sort of went how she said" she answered, trying her best to keep up with the new questions that followed her answers. "I did take her drugs on purpose. Nasty brainwash stuff, you wouldn’t like it. No, it wasn’t an accident, I’m not an idiot. I was trying to prove a point. Yes, ok, maybe that makes me an idiot. No, I don’t think she really wants me dead. Well maybe a little, but hardly for good. Yes, the stabbing thing was low for her standards too, but I got my revenge with the elephant…”

"How in all the seven systems is a mental elephant a revenge for getting stabbed in cold blood?" Theta asked, still evidently worried for Milly’s sanity.

"Reactive evolution." said the young Ushas, looking impressed.

"Yes!" beamed Milly, glad someone finally got it.

"Meaning?" asked Drax, eyeing at the door, expecting the Rani to come back any moment.

"At the moment of regeneration, the simbiotic nuclei try to assess the cause of death in order to out-evolve it. You’d have said goodbye to that little mouse face of yours long ago if it wasn’t for this trick, Drax, but… that’s hardly something that could be controlled… unless… oh!"

It was a scene from the past, the two nerds of the gang jumping up and down, overexcited about some new scientific flight of fancy, like it had happened countless times at the Academy. “Yes…?” pushed Milly.

"Genetic assimilation. Foreign substances in the Time Lord’s system being written into his biodata as coding errors… but… that’s insanely dangerous!"

"It worked though." Milly pointed out.

"Barely! You got this near to staying dead" pointed out Theta, who had hardly understood half of their nerd-off but still had his priorities straight.

"That’s another story altogether, and that’s not the point. The point is I finally got to evolve some decent mental shielding. That’s the elephant! It was the friggin Rani I was keeping out! Oakdown Looms 1, Psycho Nerd 0! Oh, if only Omega could see me now…"

This last name drop would have triggered another hail of questions, if the “Psycho Nerd” had not chosen that moment to come back in…

"You’ve met him too, then? He pops by every now and then, claims I stole something from him. It’s annoying, really. I only robbed the Omega Arsenal once." The Rani commented as she ran some scans on Milly, noticing a few irregularities in her brain patterns.

"You should be fine, remarkably. You do know if I didn’t intervene, you wouldn’t have regenerated, right?" She asked her idly as she showed her the scans. "Perhaps a few hours or so in the Zero Room if you want to make a quick recovery. Now then, why exactly did you want to show me an elephant? Still delusional, or was it something else?" She then began running some tests on the unconsious Mortimus, purely because he was within the Med Bay.

"Ushas, go grab some of the smelling salts from the shelf. He should wake up soon, and when he does, you five need to get out."

 

"No way!" protested Milly. "You’ll let him rest for as long as he needs to. As for myself, I have no intention of going anywhere and let you out of my sight. I’m not some wimpy Oldblood anyway, I can cope. And yes, I am aware of your "contribution", though I question your methods. I think you enjoyed it, though it’s probably true that i was going to be in trouble if you didn’t do it. Not your fault though, it’s mine. An inconvenient remnant of my first life. Long story. As for the elephant… well, you didn’t see it until I let you, right?"

"We are docked on a rather complicated transport hub- I’m sure there’s a place to rest out there. And believe me, I know you’re not going to leave- The CIA would disperse you in seconds if you abandoned me. By the way, Oldbloods are not obsolete, you know. Just because of some minor differences does not make you and wiser or stronger than me. If you need proof, we are both on our third incarnation. Let’s compare our age." The Rani smirked, while Theta was confused.

"How the fuck did you manage to not regenerate during this war?" He crossed his arms.

"Because I’m smarter than you, Thete." The Rani retorted, getting another wave of deja vu.

"A block? Well done, though I must admit, it wasn’t very strong. If I knew what I was looking for, I could have easily gotten past it." The Rani bluffed as she turned back to Milly, unsure how strong it was.

The age comment hit the spot, making Milly blush with embarassment. “Just so you know, Thete” said Milly, “by ‘smarter’ she means ‘more of a jerk’. And bollocks” - she turned to the Rani, “You didn’t even notice there was a block at all, let alone what it was hiding.” - she sounded surprised, as she was realizing it while she was speaking. “Wow. Cool.” she said, more to herself than anything, “I wonder what i could do with this trick about my nosy collegues back home…” - she trailed off for a few moments.

"Unless I don’t go home at all. I guess you already sent a conveniently fixed report of the recent events. But what if I were to send back another one with "proof" of my murder by your hand and just walk away with my friends this very moment? Who would be dispersed then?"

This was a bluff. As much as she wanted to stay with her old friends, there was a whole other life she’d just only begun to reclaim, and she knew full well that her position at the CIA what the only thing that gave her a chance in the current situation.

"You just regenerated, I can easily claim you were confused. The- what did you call them, penguins- will believe a genius Oldblood over a newly regenerated Newblood any day." The Rani crossed her arms stubbornly.

"I still didn’t know what I was looking for. I’m confident I can find it if I knew what it was, aside from something."

She then turned to Ushas. “Well? Where are the smelling salts?”

"I’m not going to wake Mort up before it’s time" said the young Ushas, "but I don’t think we should stay where we’re not welcome. We will carry him, if we must. Drax, Ral, go out and check if this place is safe and come back right away. If nothing smells fishy, we take our leave. Miles, it’s your last chance to come."

The two dashed out of the room without a question. Milly shook her head. “The Rani’s right. Even if I managed to make it look like she did murder me, i mean,for good, I’d never be able to go back. I’d have to live on the run, and you all with me. Well, it’s not advisable for you to try and go home either, but at least you are already on the list of the dead. Like the pink elephant, no one will be looking for you, but if I half know my collegues, they would be looking for me.”

Ushas nodded. Thete looked less convinced. “How are the others?” he asked.

"Jelp’s alive." answered Milly. "Vansell, who knows. Magnus… well, you were on one of those lists too, after all." - she didn’t ask about Kos. What Ushas had already said didn’t make her want to know more.

"So it’s a goodbye then" said Ushas, looking a bit down. Then she suddenly brightened up. "Hey, i’ve got an idea to pass the time while we wait for the other two. Rani, you said you would have found the elephant if you knew what you were looking for. Well then. Miles, think of a number. Keep it small, five digits will do. You just hide that and see if the Rani can get to it. That’s "knowing what you’re looking for" enough, isn’t it?"

Milly smiled. That was her friend. Always like this, always up to some silly game. She would have missed her a lot.

"Ok for me. Rani, are you game?"

The Rani sighed. “Very well. However, you may not just give up and show me the number if I can’t find it.” She said as she reestablished the psychic link, beginning to dig through her mind for a number.

Honestly, she respected Ushas the most out of that group- call it narcissism, but she truly saw a young version of herself in that Time Lord. Perhaps she would end up like the Rani would have, had the circumstances been better.

She shook her head and continued searching, attempting to hide those thoughts from Milly in the psychic link.

After a minute or so of searching she practically mentally shouted the number 3, hoping she found the correct number.

"Yes, good, it was supposed to be five digits though" Milly said out loud. From her point of view, it was like she was sitting on the roof of a shed, with the Rani walking around it, looking for a door, like a cat looking for the hole of a tafelshrew. Except there seemed to be no door at all. The only entrance to the shed - the visual image of the barrier that surrounded the number - was right there on the top, occupied by Milly herself.

Out in the room, she could hear young Ushas giggle.

The Rani sent a mental eye roll over to Milly. From her point of view, it was a lead box that was sealed on all sides, Milly being the force that held it down. What she decided to do was change the perspective.

She imagined, instead of a lead box, a shed. She imagined herself with an axe, attempting to cut through it. When that failed, she imagined glass wall being held up by Milly, and herself having a hammer. From there, she smashed through the wall and made it past the barrier.

"45201." She stated, breaking out of the link.

Milly was thrown out of her concentration in a way sudden and painful enough to make her curse. “That’s correct” said Thete, a smug look on his face.

"What?" asked Milly, who at the moment felt more than a bit pissed.

"The number. It’s correct. I peeked. You were so focused on keeping her out, that I could peek inside your cosy little shed with ease. Without the need to be as destructive as your new friend. Who, by the way, had you so easily because you were so focused on your barrier that you didn’t pay attention to her. In Earth’s terms: you’re a noob.”

Both Milly and Ushas stared at him, speechless. That was him. Thete at his best. Being an useless dork all the time, and then suddenly coming up with one of his episodes of utter brilliance, leaving you to wonder if the usual idiot was a mask. That brought back memories enough to make Milly’s eyes wet.

Drax and Rallon chose that moment to come back.

"So" asked Ushas, without wasting a breath. "Is it safe out there?"

"Atmospheres breathable for us, easy transport between civilizations, and not to mention how cheap the items here are." The Rani informed her, reading off her remote. "Perfectly safe to go outside."

She unlocked the doors and pointed out to them. “Now will you all please exit the vehicle? And this isn’t going to be a permanent taxi ride whenever you all are captured by Daleks, so don’t let it happen again.”

She turned to the new Milly and sighed. “Do you need to use the zero room? That mental exercise may have taken a lot of energy out of you, and you are still recovering from regeneration.”

"Fat lot of good, low prices, considering we have no money at all."said Ushas. "I was asking them anyway". She looked at Drax and Rallon. "For once i think it’s true" the small woman answered.

"Well then" said Ushas "this is a goodbye then. Miles, I hope we’ll meet again when the universe will stop trying to shake us all off like fleas."

"In another life, when we’ll all be cats" quoted Thete.

Milly smiled at him. “I got that reference”.

"Really?" He looked surprised. "How?"

"Long story. I’ll keep it for next time".

Rallon and Drax lifted their friend from his friend and over their shoulders. “I don’t think Mort eill believe a word when we’ll tell him what he missed” said Drax.

Milly didn’t know what to say, so she focused on something practical: “Rani, be a pal and throw them a couple of those credit chips you accidentally nicked from my pockets.”

Then they all found themselves out of words to say, and just walked away.

The very last moment, Thete popped up into Milly’s mind, uninvited and unavoidable. “Practice your tricks, noob.” he transmitted. Then, in the relative privacy of their mind, he gave her a solemn smooch.

A moment later they were gone.

"Yes" Milly sighed. "I think i’ll borrow your zero room now. It’s been a wild ride down memory lane and i have a lot to process…"

**Author's Note:**

> Shamelessly unbetaed rp copypaste. derp.


End file.
